Primal Communication (www.feeling-to-thought.com) You know how dreams can have transitions where you seem to step through a portal from one world to another? Phil Treloar’s monumental Primal Communication is like that. Composed for strings (Conservatorium of Tasmania String Orchestra) and improvising quartet (Feeling to Thought: Treloar, percussion; Mark Simmonds, tenor; David Ades, alto; Steve Elphick, […]

Jeanne d’Arc (Alia Vox/Fuse) She may be the most improbable figure in history. Joan of Arc was a peasant (albeit a mayor’s daughter) who supped with royalty, a female who had the full panoply of the martial patriarchy at her beck and call, and a teenager to whom learned men grudgingly paid heed. Her military […]

State Theatre, January 14, 2013 It was hardly an unreasonable expectation that, bundled together, Dianne Reeves, Angelique Kidjo and Lizz Wright might deliver an even stronger performance than each does individually. Around flashes of that reality wafted a more pervasive sense of unfulfilled potential: of the component parts somehow cancelling out rather than turbocharging each […]

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About John Shand

John Shand is a playwright, librettist, author, journalist, drummer and critic. He has written about music (and occasionally theatre) for The Sydney Morning Herald for over 20 years. His books include Don’t Shoot The Best Boy! – The Film Crew At Work (Currency), Jazz – The Australian Accent (UNSW Press) and The Phantom Of The Soap Opera(Wizard). In 2017 he won the inaugural Arts Journalism Award at the Walkleys, the nation’s preeminent awards for journalism. He lives in Katoomba (NSW) with she who is called The Mouse. He enjoys wine, and wishes he could say in moderation.